What SteelAIQ is
SteelAIQ is an AI-powered marketing consultancy based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It works with small and mid-sized businesses that have little or no in-house marketing team, providing marketing strategy, content and SEO, automation, and AI training. The firm was founded by Eric Howard, a chief marketing officer with more than twenty years of experience.
That is the short version. The longer version is that this company exists because of a gap that has annoyed me for twenty years.
I have spent my career building marketing systems inside companies that could afford them. Enterprise software, global manufacturing, national consumer brands. The work is largely the same everywhere: figure out where growth actually comes from, build the infrastructure to capture it, measure honestly, and repeat. It is not mysterious.
Small businesses never got access to any of it. Not because it would not work at their size, but because the labor cost made it impossible. Building a real content system, a working CRM, proper measurement, and consistent follow-up took a team. Teams cost more than most small businesses make in profit.
That is the specific thing AI changed. Not the strategy, which was always available. The labor. One person with judgment and the right tools can now build and run what used to take six people.
Almost nobody is doing that. The AI marketing industry that sprang up in the last two years is mostly software vendors selling subscriptions and operators who learned marketing from the same chatbot they are selling you. The strategy layer, the part that decides what the tools should be pointed at, is missing.
That is the whole company. Judgment from twenty years of doing this, leverage from AI, priced for a business that does not have a marketing department.
WHO RUNS IT
Eric Howard
FOUNDER, STEELAIQ // CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER // MBA, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
Twenty years running marketing organizations. Currently Chief Marketing Officer at Simio, an enterprise simulation software company in Sewickley, and previously at TROY Group, Orange Logic, and GNC. Consumer brands first, then enterprise B2B, which is a less common path than it sounds and it is the reason positioning comes easily to me. If you have fought for shelf space in a store, explaining why someone should pick you stops being theoretical.
Along the way: 730 percent traffic growth, 413 percent growth in organic search impressions, a Shopify store run to 125 percent of budget, and a conference taken from 75 attendees to 800. I ran the programs that brought SAP, Microsoft, Bayer, and Accenture in as enterprise customers. All of it is published and verifiable.
I have an MBA from Pitt's Katz school and a marketing degree from Grove City College. I sit on the University of Pittsburgh's CMO AI Roundtable, where a group of marketing leaders works on the governance side of AI adoption. I am also a member of AMA Pittsburgh.
SteelAIQ is new. I'm not.
The full career history · The numbers · LinkedIn
CAREER RESULTS OF ERIC HOWARD. NOT STEELAIQ CLIENT ENGAGEMENTS.
OPERATING BELIEFS
Four things we think are true, that most of this industry does not.
- 01
Strategy is the expensive part. The tools are cheap.
A subscription costs less than lunch. Knowing what to point it at is the skill, and it is the thing that took twenty years to acquire. Anyone leading with software is selling you the cheap half.
- 02
Systems beat campaigns, permanently.
A campaign produces a spike and then you are back where you started. A system compounds while you sleep. The unglamorous infrastructure work is where nearly all of the durable return lives.
- 03
AI amplifies judgment, including bad judgment.
Good marketers got dramatically more productive in the last two years. Bad marketers got dramatically more productive too, and it shows. The tool is neutral. It multiplies whatever you already were.
- 04
Dependency is a business model, not a service.
Plenty of agencies are structured so that you can never leave. We teach on purpose, document everything, and hand over what we build. If that shortens the relationship, that is the cost of being useful.
Good fit
Small and mid-sized businesses, usually with no marketing department or one person carrying all of it. Owners who are the bottleneck. Businesses spending money on marketing without being able to tell what is working. Local service businesses, eCommerce, professional services, and B2B companies under about fifty people.
The common thread is not industry. It is that marketing is currently competing with running the business for the same hours, and losing.
Not a fit
Companies with a marketing team of ten or more. You do not need an outside strategist, you need to use the people you have better, and we will tell you that on the first call instead of taking the engagement.
Businesses looking for someone to execute a plan they have already decided on. Hire a freelancer or a contractor, it will cost less and work better.
Anyone who wants volume for the sake of volume. There are cheaper vendors and you will be happier with them.
WHERE WE'RE FROM
Pittsburgh, and not incidentally.
Every meaningful job of my career happened here or was run from here. GNC in Pittsburgh. Bakery Barn in Pittsburgh. SmartShake in Pittsburgh. Simio in Sewickley, twice. An MBA from Pitt, an undergraduate degree from Grove City. Twenty years of professional network inside one metro area.
It is also the reason the logo is a bridge, and that story is better than you would expect.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
Straight answers
Is SteelAIQ just one person?
Are you not a full-time CMO somewhere else?
Why should I hire you instead of a Pittsburgh agency?
What does SteelAIQ mean?
NEXT STEP
Tell us what's broken.
Free first conversation. No deck, no demo, no discovery call that is really a sales call. If AI does not move the thing you are trying to grow, you will hear that instead of a proposal.
Start the conversationPITTSBURGH, PA // REPLY IN ONE BUSINESS DAY // NO OBLIGATION